Fact check everything

By Thunderword Staff

We constantly believe and form out opinions based off of what social media tells us. We don't take the time to do more valuable research.

As a society we have learned to accept what is told to us and not question whether it's true.

We tend to listen to what we want to hear and forget or ignore the opposing side's argument because it doesn't match our morals and values.

We have learned to close our minds into thinking our belief is the best and only belief.

We seek news sources or social media outlets to back up what we believe. But just because it's a news outlet or it's on social media doesn't mean it's credible.

As a society we need to relearn to question the sources or social media that back up our beliefs. We need to be open to other opinions and other sources.

Take for example the presidential election. A day after the presidential election a Twitter user took a picture of some buses, adding that the buses were being used to transport paid protestors against president-elect Trump.

Except it was not true.

Another example from before the election is Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump. This however is not true. But people ran with it.

Much fake news is posted online. Much of the fake news is posted to make fun of something or to make money out of it.

Either way people are just believing all the lies being posted. We as a society need to start fact checking everything we read or see on social media. We can't just accept what is going around on social media.

Facebook is one of the way fake news has been spreading.

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, says they're looking to crack down on ads for fake news.

This is only one source in the which people get their news from. There's also Twitter. While we read and agree to what the fake news is telling us, we forget to fact check anything.

We forget that people are paid to create fake news. We forget that some people just like making fun of things that are happening around us.